blonde poker forum

Anyone got any info/experiences, I'm flying out there Wednesday to work in a casino, and help build the games in the card room?

I have no info for you, but this is surely a diary-worthy thing.

#notenoughdiaries

+1

are you being an hourly rate? I have a couple of friends who do this in Maccau

Ok, I'm up for that, will be good to record events somewhere.

I'm taking the job kinda blind, the person who asked me I've worked with on events in Europe for over 5 years, so trust their recommendation, and as they're also there, seems like too good an opportunity to turn down.  Plus I got a taste for living in the sun now, after 2 years in Spain.

My initial concerns are typhoid and yellow fever jabs, have been told I need them, but in 3 days, will they work in time, also heard there's like 90% of people with AIDS in some parts, but that could just be a wind up, sounds too terrible to be correct .

Not heard about any Macau work, tell more please, do they have contracted hours etc?. I'm on a contract, wouldn't be sure i'd be going so far for hourly rates, depends on the games/rate I suppose.

they are paid to keep the games going in various casinos. They get a set hourly rate + %age of profits made.

I have another mate whose net worth over here at its peak would have been £10k and over there is winning  pots of 500k RMB which is about £60k for his backers. They are also putting him in comps like the Asia wpt and apt

Ah, so they're basically playing for the house. I'm a poker dealer/td/floor manager, so different job altogether. What's the deal there, sounds weird that a player with a net worth of £10k max would be flown over there to play?

he was deported. Free flight :)

Use 'Poker around the World thread' imo.

Tyty

Gl

link?

Get yourslef to private clinic - UI wouldn't worry to much but they will sort you out same day.  I had to got into London last week, fly tomorrow - obv not Africa I am off to Asia and Australia, however yellow fever, hep A, typhoid etc all pretty standard.  Same day clinic in Wimpole Street pretty good and they'll advise you.

PS - will obv subscribe to a diary ;)

Thanks, had to fly to Spain this morning to sort some business out, so booked here to get the yellow fever jab, rest I've been told i can sort the rest (typhoid) out there. Hep A has not been mentioned to me before now, glad you did :).

Will try and get a diary of some sorts going, not sure my writing skills, or poker content will match some I've read but if people want to hear, i'm happy to share.

Good morning.

The link is below, but it will not be of any use to you for the Tanzania excursion.

Hope it goes well.


http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=58801.0

I'm here, Tanzania is already a place I love, the people make you see the shit that gets to you in your everday life, the little niggles are nothing, these people are warm, genuine and have a smile for you. Which if you even start to hear what their day to day life consists of is nothing short of incredible. Of course there are good and not so good people everywhere and it's not a place to go walking about at night, but then again neither are certain parts of the UK.

Will fill in the scence setting more as I experience it.

As for poker, well, what can I say, not what I expected, the casino I work for only provide electronic tables (although this is set to change), but the buzz (minus the chip shuffling) is just what you get in any card room anywhere in the UK. It's mainly locals, some Indians who have made money here, and a few Chinese (who are just starting to set up business here).

If there's any poker boom going to happen in this small world of ours i'll stick my neck out and say Africa is the place next ready forn the boom switch, Ladbrokes suprisingly already have a prescence here and the casino I'm at although independant is closely linked to other operators in Sudan, Uganda and many other places. It's a whole new world for me, but feeling positive, even though I'm having to learn slot machine management software, and do a bit of inspecting again, personally I'm happy with my choice, If i'd chosen to go back to the Salford casino over here, I probably would never have realised what an opportunity/experience I was missing out on.

Day 3 feel good vibes possibly, and a lot of hard work to come, but learnt some Swahili, and met the other expats who have a huge amount of respect for the people here, something I'm sure I will also feel once I'm settled in properly.

Sounds very interesting, good luck mate and looking forward to following the diary.

Day 6 (or 5 not sure i'm working hard), any jobsworth casino floor managers should not come to Tanzania, being told to forget all I know about managing floors, is really the best advice I've had so far.

We've had a game every day and I'm now being given a title of the white witch of poker games, which I'm trying to convert to magician, not sure being known as a witch is a good way to go in Africa, but they all say it with a smile. The games are still on electronic tables, which is amazing for rake, but not so for players running bad.

They play mainly 1000/2000 Tanzanian Shillings, with a 50k minimum buy in (getting my head round the exchange rates), but it's basically between .50/1 and 1/2 so small, most will sit with about 200k, and pots average at 100k-150k, they get it in freely. To get a bigger game we need the live tables, might be a while convincing the slightly paranoid (and who can blame him) casino owner to allow it though, and then a while longer to train the dealers.

We have just sent the first advert off to the press, it's for about €7500 guaranteed tournament in about 2 weeks time, will update more details over the next few days.

On the lifestyle, might have to start playing golf again ( I was a 13 handicap player at 17), as it's one of the only really safe ways to have a decent walk about. I have my own place being finished at the moment, very modern, air con, 3 bedroom bungalow, in a secire compound. There's Masai guards (these people are unreal), a maid and driver, and apart from food have almost nothing to pay for. Which is nice. Tanzanians are amazingly friendly, warm, giving, and have strong values (thieves are treated to people justice and it's not shocking to hear of a bag snatcher being beaten to death in the streets, they actually run to the police if they are seen and chased).

Internet needs some work though...

 

Nice, I enjoyed my (brief) stay in Tanzania. If you get time or a long weekend head over to Zanzibar that island is amazing. I never went to the casinos in Africa when I was there, but have a good friend who grew up in Mombasa, North Kenya and believes all of the casinos in West Africa are crooked with dodgy roulette tables and stuff. Coming from poker I'm naturally skeptical about gamblers who lose calling everything "rigged" but I wonder from your experience so far what you make of this so far.

Looking forward to following this blog - have fun out there!

Friends have just come back from Zanzibar, I couldn't swing a few days off so soon, but from the pictures and stories It's in my top 5 things to do.

As for casino's rigging games, Tanzania have a gaming board, and it runs along similar lines to the UK equivalent, and the machines, roulette wheels and croupiers are all scrutinized as they would be in the UK, no difference from what i've seen so far. As for the rest of Africa, well I've no I dea, but haven't heard any recent stories of any wrongdoings from either casino's or players.

In the casino, we are about to start our first cash race, maybe the first in Africa, so been really busy getting the staff ready for that, will try and write a proper update soon.

Tom from Bristol Poker Meetup / GNF is there at the moment doing charity work for a couple of months, and plays a bit of poker whilst out there - though think he travelled to Uganda for his most recent game. Reckon he'd love to meet up for a game if you 2 weren't too far apart.

If he's on blonde he'll probably be under tfeilding or ashhen usernames?... Or you could try adding him/messaging him through facebook (Tom Feilding - spelled that way, not Fielding), or contacting him through APAT. Here's a link to a thread there explaining what he's doing out there (hope linking to APAT is okay?): http://www.apat.com/forum/index.php?topic=13136.0

Hope it's ok to have a little beg here, some will know I'm in Tanzania where I'm working to grow a card room within a casino, amongst other casino work.

There's not a great deal of money here, the GDP is in the bottom 10% worldwide, basically the people are amongst the poorest 10% worldwide.

So I want to promote poker, at all levels (there are some biggish games too), there's a decent player pool already, poker being played every day, I've seen well over 100 players, here and in other casino's. I have some contacts in both live and online poker, and would like to add to this, any individual or company looking to promote their business or just having poker related good and products they can send. Anything considered (from card protectors, magazines, clothing, offers to players, etc, etc) and of course will be pushing blonde and DTD online, as we don't have a site yet, so hopefully you'll see some new members/players from Tanzania and further afield in Africa soon.

Hope it's ok to post this, will understand if it's not, just wasn't sure who to ask, and really busy so thought I'd post and see :D

For my email please PM me, or post your details here. Thanks in Advance.

Sounds great, will contact him, thanks :D

Would Blonde or DTD be interested in getting some exposure in Africa?

Hey - I'm the Tom Feilding who Mango posted about above (thanks Matt).

Ive been in touch with the OP via FB and we might be meeting up in 10 days in Dar es Salaam. I'm out here for a few weeks with a fellow poker player but we are in rural Tz, so there are not many games here, or much of anything really.

As chance would have it, we played a few HU games last night and taught some local friends how to play. I particulary love the mix of glazed expressions and outright sleeping going on in this photo:

(http://i657.photobucket.com/albums/uu299/pokerygoodness/pokertz_zpsca526014.jpg)

I'm not sure of the rules regarding links on Blonde, so feel free to remove it if needs be, but this is where I write about what I get up to: www.tomintanzania.com - A couple of blonde players bung some money in my direction from time to time too (and not just on the tables, fnar fnar). (My attempt at bringing this back on topic).

I was vaguely aware of games here. In past years Ive tried finding stuff in Dodoma (technically the capital, but in reality a sandpit). With no joy. Antonio Esfandiari was playing out here 18 months ago tho, so there must have been something going on. I found an amazing game in Uganda a while back. Poker was new to Kampala and people stacking off for 5x pot with a gutshot was standard practice. Despite being an uber micro stake player back then, I won enough over a few nights to finance a WSOP trip.

There's 5 casino's in Dar es salaam, I will list them all. If you want to visit the casino I work at, please PM me. Want to try and work this round to Poker in Africa, and not focus on where I work so much.

The casino's are:

Sea Cliff - regular poker games
Palm Beach - regular poker games
Las Vegas - smaller stakes and electronic tables, MTT's.
New Africa - some poker
La Grande -some poker

I believe there are others coming, and I've heard of some larger stakes private games.

Biggest games on a regular basis in casino's are 2000/4000, with the occasional 5000/10000 Tsh.

Are you taking any malaria precautions? It's not very pleasant to get. Neither is mefloquine to take either lol
I took antibiotics for about 2 years, which is kind of inadvisable. I also wore long sleeves a fair bit, used the sprays, and a net at night.
Presume that someone will try to save money by serving you water from a tap, presented in a mineral water bottle. Refuse to drink it unless you saw the seal broken with your own eyes.
Don't know the HIV rate, but pretty high in all of West Africa. You certainly don't want to go sleeping with anyone there, easier said than done when you're on your own, drunk, at 2 am in a nightclub and local lovelies are throwing themselves at you. Then you wake at 10am, she's gone, so is your money, and the pack of condoms has remained unopened. Or, she's planted drugs, and called the cops, who are about to show at your door for their share of the pay-off. So the best precaution is not to get wasted at night in places full of hookers. I did write up a big guidebook once on getting by, it didn't stop most people I was with taking no antimalarials and taking plenty of ladies of the night.
Went to a couple of casinos, would expect them to be pretty corrupt, almost as much as the gaming boards. I refused to pay bribes to government officials (who demanded it to my face), nearly did jail time as a result. Good luck.

No worries, well, I've got Masai guards/local security company for home, and our own casino security too. But any tips are always welcome. The casino is central, house is near where the USA embassy staff live so good security all round.

Had all my jabs, malaria is different here than most of Africa, so you need different tablets i'm told, but took some and so far all good.

Great pic Tom, looking forward to meeting you. I've been told it was my card room that Antonio visited, back then we had great games, bad management ruined them, but already the players are coming back to meet me, so all being well they will be back for good.

I'm also looking for a good charity or three to raise funds for, in the casino and card room, from the brief amount of your blog I've managed to read (just really, really busy) sounds like exactly what I'd like to support.

Look forward to meeting you, and to the posts about safety and maleria etc, yes, all advice is welcome, but please keep it relevant this is a poker in Africa thread. :)

Nearly 4 weeks in, and every day is still an adventure. Loved the place when I got here, and it's still growing on me day by day. Moved in to a new house, and might be given sole responsibility for the card room soon to, which will be great, as the current staff really haven't got a clue (about poker, they are great with the players), which is probably why it's been quiet so far.

The games so far have been limited to 1000/2000 Tsh, about 50/100 pence, any bigger and they want to play on a real table, which is still in transit here (or so i've been told). It can be frustrating how long it takes to get anything done here, not like London where all the equipment, trained dealers are readily available, but as one of the fastest growing cities in the world, I'm really excited about the future here.

Still looking for more link ups from poker related products and services, we have the largest card room in Dar es Salaam, and room to expand!

http://forum.parttimepoker.com/report-abuse-forum/934574-jackinbeat-investigation.html

Would be cool if you took care of this at some point...

By this post you could assume I hadn't, where the opposite is the case. Small minded people like you clearly don't bother to get facts before posting.

As I respect blonde I'll make it clear, moving here has meant I've put my stakes on hold, all the people involved are aware of this, although as I only have access to facebook and blonde from work (and it took major begging to get that), so all PTP messages have been posted by another member.

Pixxicato you clearly have an issue with me, but as far as I know we've never met, maybe I dealt you a bad beat somewhere?

As THIS (http://forum.parttimepoker.com/shooting-off-sponsored-carbon-poker/933882-update-jackinbeat-investors.html) thread clearly shows you messaged someone who isnt even invested in your package/s on facebook to tell them you had gone to Africa on 3 days notice but you would be sorted out within a few days.

You made no further attempts to contact anyone about it all until I posted here and you got another message from the person you contacted before...

As I said I can't read the links, but thanks for updating everyone else. Maybe a PM with the details would help, but as I said, I've sent messages when needed through Rayan, and not heard anything about an issue apart from your messages here!

The original message was correct, I did expect full internet access a few weeks ago, but due to me moving in to a new house, that needed a new connection it's taken a lot longer.

Really don't see why I should defend myself any longer on this thread, which is about poker in Africa, and as it's nothing to do with that, maybe start a new thread if it means that much to you, but please can we get this back on topic. You might be interested in trying to accuse me of something, but clearly not about poker in other parts of the world, so leave the personal attacks off this thread.

I've looked into playing before in Tz but have never found a game.... until this thread came along.

You'd think casinos would be rather shite in Africa, somewhat like this:


But that really isnt the case. This pic is from a week or so ago but from a small arcade thingy in one of the smaller cities. Instead the casinos tend to be large, with the latest slots and table games, plus they tend to be rather generous when it comes to freebies like food and drink. The Las Vegas was no exception. We had food and drinks comped all night which was as appreciated as much as it was abused.

The casino has ordered poker tables but in the mean time they are using Electronic tables. I expected these to be really rubbish and so Shane and I made plans to go for an hour, say hi to Matt and play a few hands before heading off to dinner someplace around 9pm. Instead, following a warm welcome and short lesson about using the tables (we played a 4 handed SnG which I binked by adopting a policy of going in with the worst of it each time), we got into the game and didn't leave until 5am - just in time to grab our stuff and catch our flights back to the UK.

The game is 1000/2000tshs or around 40p/80p. The tables were very impressive. The days of dealer dealt cash tables has to be numbered. The machines can be programmed for just about anything. You could straddle, sit out, reload and do anything you would normally do on a regular table. It also negated issues like string betting and the time bank meant the game didn't dawdle. We were playing 50 hands an hour. The rake was just 2% - although this was uncapped. I gather there is discussion of a cap being put in place but it didn't much matter at this level.

I intended to take a photo of the tables, but the free beer got in the way. Here is one lifted off the internet:


The players are what made the game. There was a mix of indians and Africans and one other white guy. All lived in the country and knew each other to varying degrees. Everyone was welcoming. The guy who stands out the most was the white guy who seemed to work in the more exotic end of the adult entertainment industry. At one stage he passed around his phone showing off a clip of some transexual shennigans. Another guy was black Tanzanian but spoke English better than most Brits. He had spent years in the UK and it turned out he knew the Matt the card room manager from playing in London. He name dropped a few Brit players, was producing his own Tanzanian gangster film and was well dressed - so I expected a balla. Instead he was being rolled by someone and played so incredibly nitty. A couple of hours in he was complaining about running badly but he was down under 2BB and (hadn't to my mind) played a single hand.

The other players were mainly Indian. The ability was better than expected. In fact some of the players were pretty darned good. And others not so much. It was certainly far ahead of the game I found a few years back in Kampala.

I brought in for 100k (£40). I figured Id rather start on 50bb so I could get a feel for how the table played. Sure enough after 30 minutes I spew it off with 89 on a 27T flop with multiway action. I reload another 100k and run well. I had QQ a bunch of times and made quite a few straights or flushes with other hands. After a couple of hours I was labelled the nit from Bristol but by the end of the session I was called Tom the pro. This had more to do with the hands I was being dealt than any playing ability though.

The porn guy was the aggressive player and I soon got a feel for how he played. Several times he had good hands and I folded out, usually cos I had crap, but I got to rebluff him and show my hand when he was telling the table how he knew I had a monster. He asked how I knew to avoid him when he was strong on the other hands and I told him I had a physical tell on him. He didn't clash with me at all after that. After the game packed up he took me to one side and said because we would never play together again then could I let him know what it was he was doing. It was quite amusing seeing his relief as I told him he didnt have any that I had spotted.

I spun my stack up to a peak of around 850,000tshs (£350ish) and decided I would leave when I hit the million. I then lost 300k over a few hands. Flush under flush was one that sticks in my mind. Another was when I bet 100k on the river into an 80k pot when I had taken a weird line semi-bluffing only to back into kings-up and he had rivered a gut shot for the 2nd nuts which he flatted behind me. He had a habit of calling any bet regardless of the ratio to the pot so I figured it was the right time to overbet. I guess not.

At 5am I cashed out for 550,000tshs and Shane had spun 200,000tshs into 350,000tshs. As we left, the table broke. That's often a sign that we are the fish but I think the game usually only lasts about 3 hours and had instead lasted around 7.

The good thing about the tables is you can see your stats. Here are mine:


Finally - thanks to Matt for looking after us and introducing us to everyone. It was a cracking end to a good trip.